Anyone who’s used Facebook for a while knows how frustrating it can be. These days, you’re either swamped with suggested posts from groups and pages you never joined or struggling to find updates from the people you actually care about.
Fortunately, there are ways to improve your Facebook experience. Start by cleaning up your account annually—remove friends, likes, and groups that no longer interest you. While your feed mainly reflects your activity—such as the posts you comment on, share, or react to—your friends list, likes, and groups also influence what you see.
If you haven’t been actively managing your social media accounts, it might be time to make it a regular habit to avoid feeling overwhelmed. Here are a few tips to help you take control of your Facebook feed and adjust the platform’s settings to better align with your interests and preferences.
Adjust your Facebook feed preferences
To improve your Facebook feed, start by adjusting your settings. Here’s how to do it on different devices:
On a Computer:
- Visit facebook.com, log in, and click your profile photo in the top-right corner.
- Select Settings & Privacy.
- Click Feed.
On an iPhone or Android Phone:
- Open the Facebook app and log in if needed.
- Tap your profile photo in the bottom-right or top-right corner.
- Go to Settings and Privacy.
- Select Settings.
- Under Preferences, tap Feed.
From this menu, you can:
- Add to Favorites: Search for and select profiles of people and pages to ensure their posts appear more frequently in your feed.
- Snooze: Temporarily mute posts from people, pages, or groups. They will remain in your network but won’t show up in your feed for the duration of the snooze period.
- Unfollow: Stop seeing posts from specific people, pages, or groups in your feed. Unfollowing keeps the connection but hides their content. Unfollowing a Page removes it from your network entirely. If you change your mind, you can revisit Manage Your Feed and select Reconnect to start seeing and following these accounts again.
Lastly, choose Reduce to decrease the amount of low-quality content, such as repetitive, sensitive, graphic, or clickbait posts.
Clean Up Your Facebook News Feed as You Browse
Another way to refine your Facebook experience is by providing feedback on posts as you see them. Each post in your news feed has an X in the top-right corner that you can click to hide the post from view. On the mobile app, this simply means the post will no longer appear in your feed. On a computer, hiding the post also offers additional options like snoozing the account that posted it or further managing your feed preferences.
By clicking the three-dot icon next to the X, you can access more options. These include Show More / Show Less controls to influence which types of posts are prioritized, hiding the post to see fewer similar entries, snoozing the person, page, or group responsible for the post, or unfollowing them. Unfollowing a person or group keeps your connection intact but removes their posts from your feed, while unfollowing a page will completely remove it from your Facebook account.
If the post was shared by a friend, the three-dot icon also provides an option to block their profile if needed.
Clicking the three-dot icon next to the X reveals additional options. You can use the Show More / Show Less controls to adjust which posts are prioritized in your feed. You also have the option to hide the post to reduce similar content, snooze the person, page, or group responsible for it, or unfollow them. Unfollowing a person or group maintains your connection but hides their posts from your feed, while unfollowing a page completely removes it from your Facebook account.
If the post was shared by a friend, the three-dot icon also provides a quick option to block their profile if needed.
Go to the Facebook profiles of specific friends
According to Facebook, the more you engage with people by commenting on, reacting to, or sharing their posts, the more frequently their updates will appear in your news feed. To ensure that posts from your favorite friends aren’t lost among others, visit their Facebook profiles directly and interact with their content. This method is an effective alternative to marking friends as Favorites using the Manage Your Feed feature, especially since Facebook limits you to highlighting only thirty accounts.
Conversely, if you find that irrelevant or undesirable posts are coming from a particular friend (and we all have one or two), you can mute that person on Facebook. If the individual is someone you haven’t interacted with in a while, consider unfriending them altogether. To unfriend someone, visit their profile, click the Friends button next to their profile photo, and select Unfriend. If you decide to reconnect in the future, you’ll need to send a new friend request.
Link additional Facebook profiles to your main account
A relatively new Facebook feature allows you to create up to four additional profiles under your main account, eliminating the need to start from scratch with a new Facebook account. You can switch between these profiles by clicking your profile photo in the navigation menu and selecting the desired profile from the list, without needing a new username or password.
This feature is particularly useful for organizing a large number of friends, pages, and groups. You can set up separate profiles for different aspects of your Facebook life—such as one for real-life friends and family, another for work, and additional profiles for specific interests or hobbies. This segregation helps keep your news feed more relevant and manageable. Plus, each additional profile comes with its own distinct Facebook algorithm, which you can customize to better suit your preferences.
